Music Magnified

Greg Brown

with Bo Ramsey and Pieta Brown

By Michael Henningsen

Greg Brown

Saturday, Jan. 15; Lensic Performing Arts Center (211 West San Francisco in Santa Fe, 7:30 p.m., all ages): As far as folk-based singer-songwriters go, there are perhaps none as broadly talented as Greg Brown, whose insight, melodic sensibilities and gift for creating colorful imagery with even the simplest turn of a phrase can be so subtle as to be deceiving, so vivid as to be physically moving.

Over the course of 18 records and almost constant touring, Brown has left his mark not just on audiences all over the world, but on the musical mindset of nearly every purveyor of the singer-songwriter genre to have come after him—from Richard Shindell and Martin Sexton to Lucy Kaplansky and Dar Williams. Greg Brown is the undisputed real deal. Accept no substitutes.